T60 build quality (creak & juggle)?

[beagle72]

Hi,

I recently upgraded from a venerable but well-worn T21 (P3/800mhz) to a second-hand T60 (C2Duo/1.6/120gb/1gb ram/15.4ws). The T60 was "won" from ebay at a good price from a reputable auction house. The machine appears to have been little used and possibly sourced from a corporate environment. According to the IBM warranty site it is still under warranty through Jan 2008.

The T60 is of course a tremendous upgrade. Performance is wonderful, even with the pre-installed Vista Business.

Two quirks about the build quality have come to my attention. Just wondering if these are common.

1. The battery jiggles a little bit. Not a big deal with the T60 on a surface, but if you move the computer around you notice the slight jiggle. Doesn't seem to affect its "contact". My T21 battery was held in solidly.

2. The right side of the wrist rest is "hollow" underneath. This causes the portion of the surface between the trackpad and the fingerprint sensor to "give" when leaning the wrist, and that give can be a bit squeaky. Not a huge deal, but noticeable. The left side of the wrist rest area feels very solid, perhaps the memory or some other component is installed underneath. But being right-handed, I typically lean on the right (squeaky side).

I suppose neither of these issues rises to the level of warranty worthy. In every other respect the machine is performing brilliantly. Since this is my first Lenovo-made Thinkpad, just wondering if these little quirks have been observed before, or if my machine is more quirky than average.

thanks!
beagle

[ryengineer]

1. Is it 6 or 9 cell? 9 cell is supposed to juggle. You can put a duct tape on it to tighten the battery to fit.

See this thread to get more info.

2. Unscrew the screws (memory labelled) and screw them back, sometimes it can fix this issue.

[beagle72]

This is the 6 cell battery, actually. Basically, you can "push" on it and it jiggles in place just a little bit. Really not a big deal, just something I noticed.

Thanks for the tip about the memory screws under the wrist rest, I will try that.

[pianowizard]

I owned a T60, a T20, a T21 and two T23's, and the palm rest of the T60 was indeed less solid than those of the T2*'s. But other than that, the T60 felt sturdier than all of the T2*'s.

As ryengineer suggested, reseating the palm rest might help.

[blueblood]

hi,

i own a t60p model 8744.
when i bought it in march, they keyboard bezel would creak just the slightest.
later down the line my left mouse button on the touch pad got broken so i got a new palm rest. at that time i also changed the bezel.
what i figured is that the plastic parts itself are fine; at times all you need to do is to re seat it.
open it up and put it back again.!

when i had changed my palm rest, about a month and a half ago i developed the same "creak" on the right side of the palm rest which you mentioned in this thread.
being busy i didnt bother with it much, but when i read your post i opened it up again (just now) and re seated it.
its perfect now.

i would suggest you do the same.
take the palm rest, keyboard and even perhaps the keyboard bezel off and re seat all of the. do read the maintenance manual and watch the videos before you do it.

i think it should remove 90% of your creaking problem.
one thing that i have noticed is that at times there are wires underneath the parts, like the keyboard bezel and the palmrest. usually the wires are tapped and have channels to go though, but at times they pop out of them, ever so slightly lifitng up the plastic part and creating a creak.
when you re assembly make sure all wires underneath are where they should be.

oh and the battery jiggle... that is there to stay. i hear that the newer batteries dont have it, my 9 cell has appreciable "play" in it.

just my experince, hope it helps!

cheers

[tomh009]

My X31 has some play on the battery as well; the easy way to address it is tape a small piece of thin cloth or paper towel onto the top of the battery. This eliminates the play and the battery will no longer feel loose.

[pianowizard]

a small piece of thin cloth or paper towel onto the top of the battery.

Or several layers of black electrical tape. Does the same job, and the battery will look prettier.